30/04/2007

From the Feuilletons is a weekly overview of what's been happening in the German-language cultural pages and appears every Friday at 3 pm. CET.. Here a key to the German newspapers.

In an earlier version of our newsletter, a half-asleep editor located Sofia in Romania. Thank you to readers for drawing our attention to this.

Monday 30 April, 2007

Die Tageszeitung 30.04.2007

The East Europe Institute of Berlin's Free University had to withdraw from a conference in Sofia, reports cultural anthropologistIvaylo Ditchev. The topic of the conference was to be the legendary 1876 massacre of Batak at which Ottoman troops killed some 30,000 people there while suppressing an uprising. "Television and newspapers (particularly the country's
largest broadcaster, which is in the hands of Rupert Murdoch, and the
largest newspaper, which belongs to the German WAZ group),
nationalist historians and high state officials on the side of the state have
gathered together and suggested that the project negates the victims.
The Academy of Sciences was prohibited from hosting the conference.
Militant members of the nationalist party and residents of Batak openly
threatened to beat up attendees at the conference, if it takes place."

Süddeutsche Zeitung 30.04.2007

Estonian artist Hanno Soanstells
Matthias Kolb about the emotional signficance of the soldiers' memorial
in Tallinn, whose destruction led to deadly riots among the Soviet
minority (more here). He recalls how his performance in 1998 got an unexpected response.
"I posed behind the memorial so it would look like a mirror image. My
naked body was painted pink, and in front of me was a pile of bananas
Ã¢â¬â a representation of the eternal light that blazed there during the
Soviet period. I called the event 'Another unknown soldier,' because
back then hardly anyone talked about the graves under the memorial.
Some passers-by appreciated it, others cursed it. After ten minutes I
drove away, and a friend filmed the whole thing. Then something totally
unexpected happened: The people scrambled for the bananas that I'd left as an offering."

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 30.04.2007

On the weekend, the
FAZreported that Stanford University was considering buying into the
publishing houseSuhrkamp; within hours, the Südeutsche Zeitung had
repudiated the rumour. "An American university as an investor in a
German publisher of fiction? - No wonder the story sounds so
improbable. It's simply wrong." The FAZ now justifies its report with a
quote from Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Stanford professor (and one-time doctoral
supervisor of Frank Schirrmacher Ã¢â¬â editor in chief of the FAZ) who said, "Of course there was talk of a financial relationship."

Die Welt 30.04.2007

Is Great
Britain becoming less Great Britain? Are the Scots preparing to take
leave of England? Gina Thomas considers the fact that the three hundredth
anniversary of the Scottish-English union and the Scottish elections,
which the separatists have a good chance of winning, both fall on
Thursday. "In the last forty years, there have been dramatic
developments on both sides of the Tweed, which have been most evident at
sports events. At the soccer championships of 1966, the English team
wore the 'Union Jack' Ã¢â¬â born of the merged emblems of the patron saints of England, Scotland,
and Ireland. At today's games in England, the only flag to be seen is
the red cross of St.George, while the Scots take the field with
their white St. Andrew's cross on the blue background. Nothing could be
more symbolic than that Ã¢â¬â the increasing fragmentation of the national
consciousness as played out in the demolition of the symbol of unity."

Saturday 28 April, 2007

Die Tageszeitung 28.04.2007

Judith Luig sees the art scene in Damascus vascillating between self-censorship and modernity. "'There's no such thing as Syrian art,' asserts Mahmoud Shahin. 'Or at least not yet. Maybe in 50 or 100 years we'll have found the character of Arab art but not yet.' Referring to the work of his students, the sculpture professor says, "We're somewhere in the experimental phase.' The exhibition that opened the previous day at the Goethe Institute in the prosperous Malki district of Damascus seems to prove his thesis. On the platform, semi-abstract ceramic doves entwine gracefully, a plaster of Paris maiden hovers in the corner, and surrealism hangs next to realism on the walls."

Berliner Zeitung 28.04.2007

In an amusing weekend interview with Ulrich Seidler, the director of the Berliner Ensemble, Claus Peymann, advises against going to the completely sold out Theatertreffen to which he was not invited. "The Theatertreffen has become a ideological, fringey program
of a particular clique of critics who are fed up with theater and who
invite the same groups every year, always hungry for the allure of
something new Ã¢â¬â as young as possible, and hopefully female. These tedious puppets have already ejected Christoph Marthaler and Frank Castorf.
But I don't want to complain. The Theatertreffen is our stock exchange,
and maybe the theatre is really as poor as the Theatertreffen makes it
seem."

Spiegel Online 27.04.2007

It didn't take long for Necla Kelek to respond in a guest commentary to the slanderous remarks of Feridun Zaimoglu, who accused Islam critics like Kelek of defaming religious Muslims. Kelek hopes that his position may enable a neo-Muslim woman to take part in the second Islam Conference
which will take place on Wednesday. "It seems he has missed the point,
that participants in the Islam Conference are involved in a
constructive, critical discourse. The Islam Conference is the first
institution in which dialogue actually takes place between
Muslims and with governmental institutions. It is pretty revolutionary
to find conservative and secular Muslims, Sunnis, Alevites and Shiites
talking together so intensively and for such a long time. This forum
for open debate is fitting for our democratic society and is also new
for representatives of Islamic associations.... The fact that Zaimoglu
is attempting to denounce it is shameful and shows that this writer has
no interest in democratic process and discourses. That is why it makes
sense for him to leave the conference. Muslim women will have to fight
for their own progress and freedom. I am with them." (features by Kelek and Zaimoglu here and here)

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 28.04.2007

Ezhar Cezairli, representing secular Muslims at the second Islam Conference opening this Wednesday, tells Karen Krüger she mistrusts the legitimacy of the newly founded Coordinating Council of Muslims (more):
"If the federal government recognizes this umbrella organization as a
representative of all Muslims, it will be making a grave error and
throwing the entire Islam Conference into question." Cezairli
prefers to understand the Islam Conference by its original purpose: 'to
initiate dialogue between Muslims and representatives of the state. It
has succeeded in that. And in addition, secular Muslims talk to Muslims
whose religious world view is conservative, even fundamentalist. This
discussion is important because there is a strong tendency to
reformulate social problems in religious terms, and thus to ascribe
them to religious associations. But that is false advertising, and we must object to it."

Saturday 11 - 17 December, 2010

A clutch of German newspapers launch an appeal against the criminalisation of Wikileaks. Vera Lengsfeld remembers GDR dissident Jürgen Fuchs and how he met death in his cell. All the papers were bowled over Xavier Beauvois' film "Of Gods and Men." The FR enjoys a joke but not a picnic at a staging of Stravinsky's "Rake's Progress" in Berlin. Gustav Seibt provides a lurid description of Napoleonic soap in the SZ. German-Turkish Dogan Akhanli author explains what it feels like to be Josef K. read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 December

Colombian writer Hector Abad defends Nobel Prize laureate Mario Vargas Llosa against European Latin-America romantics. Wikileaks dissident Daniel Domscheit-Berg criticises the new publication policy of his former employer. The Sprengel Museum has put on a show of child nudes by die Brücke artists. The SZ takes a walk through the Internet woods with FAZ prophet of doom Frank Schirrmacher. The FAZ is troubled by Christian Thielemann's unstable tempo in the Beethoven cycle. And the FR meets China Free Press publisher, Bao Pu.read more

Saturday 27 November - Friday 3 December

Danish author Frederik Stjernfelt explains how the Left got its culturist ideas. Slavenka Draculic writes about censoring Angelina Jolie who wanted to make a film in Bosnia. Daniel Cohn-Bendit talksÃÂ ÃÂ about his friendship, falling out and reconciliation with Jean-Luc Godard. Wikileaks has caused an embarrassed silence in the Arab world, where not even al-Jazeera reported on the what the sheiks really think. Alan Posener calls for the Hannah Arendt Institute in Dresden to be shut down.read more

Saturday 20 - Friday 26 November, 2010

The theatre event of the week came in a twin pack: Roland Schimmelpfennig's new play, a post-colonial "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" opened at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin and the Thalia in Hamburg. The anarchist pamphlet "The Coming Insurrection" has at last been translated into German and has ignited the revolutionary sympathies of at least two leading German broadsheets, the FAZ and the SZ. But the taz, Germany's left-wing daily, says the pamphlet is strongly right-wing. What's left and right anyway? came the reply.read more

Saturday 13 - Friday 19 November, 2010

Dieter Schlesak levels grave accusations against his former friend and colleague, Oskar Pastior, who spied on him for the Securitate. Banat-Swabian author and vice chairman of the Oskar Pastior Foundation, Ernest Wichner, turns on Schlesak for spreading malicious rumours. Die Zeit portrays the Berlin rapper Harris, and the moment he knew he was German. Dutch author Cees Nooteboom meditates on the near lust for physical torture in the paintings of Francisco de Zurburan. An exhibition in Mannheim displays the dream house photography of Julius Schulman.read more

Saturday 6 - Friday 12 November, 2010

The NZZ asks why banks invest in art. The FAZ gawps at the unnatural stack of stomach muscles in Michelangelo's drawings. The taz witnesses a giant step for the "Yugo palaver". Bernard-Henri Levy describes Sakineh Ashtiani's impending execution as a test for Iran and the west.Journalist Michael Anti talks about the healthy relationship between the net and the Chinese media. Literary academic Helmut Lethen describes how Ernst Jünger stripped the worker of all organic substances.read more

Saturday 30 October - Friday 5 November, 2010

Now that German TV has just beatifiedPope Pius XII, Rolf Hochmuth tells die Welt where he got the idea for his play "The Deputy". The FR celebrates Elfriede Jelinek's "brilliantly malicious" farce about the collapse of the Cologne City Archive. "Carlos" director Olivier Assayas makes it clear that the revolutionary subject is a figment of the imagination. The SZ returns from the Shanghai Expo with a cloying after-taste of sweet 'n' sour. And historian Wang Hui tells the NZZ that China's intellectuals have plenty of freedom to pose critical questions.read more

Saturday 23 - Friday 29 October, 2010

Author Doron Rabinovici protests against the concessions of moderate Austrian politicians to the FPÖ: recently in Vienna, children were sent back to Kosovo at gunpoint. Ian McEwan wonders why major German novelists didn't mention the Wall. The NZZ looks through the Priz Goncourt shortlist and finds plenty of writers with more bite than Houellebecq. The FAZ outs two of Germany's leading journalists who fiercely guarded the German Foreign Ministry's Nazi past. Jens-Martin Eriksen and Frederik Stjernfelt analyse the symptoms of culturalism, left and right. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht demonstratively yawns at German debate.read more

Saturday 16 - Friday 22 October, 2010

A new book chronicles the revolt of revolting "third persons" at Suhrkamp publishers in the wild days of 1968. Necla Kelek is appalled by the speech of the very Christian Christian Wulff, the German president, in Turkey. The taz met a new faction of hardcore Palestinians who are fighting for separate sex hairdressing in Gaza. Sinologist Andreas Schlieker reports on the new Chinese willingness to restructure the heart. And the Cologne band Erdmöbel celebrate the famous halo around the frying pan.read more

Saturday 9 - Friday 15 October, 2010

The FR laps up the muscular male bodies and bellies at the Michelangelo exhibition in the Viennese Albertina. The same paper is outraged by the cowardice of the Berlin exhibition "Hitler and the Germans". Mario Vargas-Llosa remembers a bad line from Sweden. Theologist Friedrich Wilhelm Graf makes it very clear that Western values are not Judaeo-Christian values. The Achse des Guten is annoyed by the attempts of the mainstream media to dismiss Mario Vargas-Llosa. The NZZ celebrates the tireless self-demolition of Polish writer and satirist Slawomir Mrozek.read more

Saturday 2 - Friday 8 October, 2010

Nigerian writer Niyi Osundare explains why his country has become uninhabitable. German Book Prize winner Melinda Nadj Abonji says Switzerland only pretends to be liberal. German author Monika Maron is not surethat Islam really does belong to Germany. Russian writer Oleg Yuriev explains the disastrous effects of postmodernism on the Petersburg Hermitage. Argentinian author Martin Caparros describes how the Kirchners have co-opted the country's revolutionary history. And publisher Damian Tabarovsky explains why 2001 was such an explosively creative year for Argentina.read more

Saturday 25 September - Friday 1 October

Three East German theatre directors talk about the trauma of reunification. In the FAZ, Thilo Sarrazin denies accusations that his book propagates eugenics: "I am interested in the interplay of nature and nurture." Polemics are being drowned out by blaring lullabies, author Thea Dorn despairs. Author Iris Radisch is dismayed by the state of the German novel - too much idle chatter, not enough literary clout. Der Spiegel posts its interview with the German WikiLeaks spokesman, Daniel Schmitt. And Vaclav Havel's appeal to award the Nobel prize to Liu Xiabobo has the Chinese authorities pulling out their hair.read more

Saturday 18 - Friday 24 September, 2010

Herta Müller's response to the news that poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant was one of overwhelming grief: "When he returned home from the gulag he was everybody's game." Theatre director Luk Perceval talks about the veiled depression in his theatre. Cartoonist Molly Norris has disappeared after receiving death threats for her "Everybody Draw Mohammed" campaign. The Berliner Zeitung approves of the mellowing in Pierre Boulez' music. And Chinese writer Liao Yiwu, allowed to leave China for the first time, explains why schnapps is his most important writing tool.read more

Saturday 10 - Friday 17 September, 2010

The poet Oskar Pastior was a Securitate informant, the historian Stefan Sienerth has discovered. Biologist Veronika Lipphardt dismisses Thilo Sarrazin'sincendiary intelligence theories as a load of codswallop. A number of prominent Muslim intellectuals in Germany have written an open letter to President Christian Wulff, calling for him to "make a stand for a democratic culture based on mutual respect." And a Shell study has revealed that Germany's youth aspire to be just like their parents.read more

Saturday 4 - Friday 10 September, 2010

Thilo Sarrazin has buckled under the stress of the past two weeks and resigned from the board of the Central Bank. His book, "Germany is abolishing itself", however, continues to keep Germany locked in a debate about education and immigration and intelligence. Also this week, Mohammed cartoonist Kurt Westergaard has been awarded the M100 prize for defending freedom of opinion. Chancellor Angela Merkel gave a speech at the award ceremony: "The secret of freedom is courage". The FAZ interviewed Westergaard, who expressed his disappointment that the only people who had shown him no support were those of his own class. read more